Eleanor Glaze was my father’s partner for over 20 years and, for all intents and purposes, my stepmother. On October 14th of this year, Eleanor passed away. We are all trying to deal with the loss and come to terms with it. My way is to honor her and share what Eleanor was to me. Continue reading →

My mother hated her kinky, fuzzy Afro-Jew hair. The second of her four children, I inherited her slender frame, her father’s Mongol cheekbones, her memory for minutiae – and her kinky, fuzzy Afro-Jew hair. Continue reading →

My mother was Polish. Her mother had come to this country as a child and landed in Lorain, Ohio – a suburb of Cleveland. For as long as I can remember my mom would pack up me, my sister and my brother and we would go visit my grandma. Spending time at grandma’s consisted of a lot of sitting around the kitchen table hanging out with my mom and her trio of brothers (think “The Deer Hunter”). You get the idea. Continue reading →

I grew up in the 70′s and I was obsessed with fashion magazines. Actually, fashion magazines were my crack. I craved them, I needed them, I let them define me. And, like crack, they also nearly destroyed me. My views on beauty were based on these fashion magazines. They told me what was beautiful. They told me how to be skinny, how to get a man, how to have sex and keep skinny, why men were attracted to “dumb women,” how to Continue reading →